


Cutting Edge Technology

by VictoriannWings



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Lovesickness, M/M, Miro, Mutual Pining, Shatt, haircut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 17:29:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10621698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoriannWings/pseuds/VictoriannWings
Summary: Pidge needs to give Matt a haircut before he starts to look like a bush, but his PTSD gets in the way. Shiro understands.





	

"Okay. I'm not going to cut it until you tell me to."

Pidge had spent the past hour trying to approach Matt with scissors but every time she did, he would dissolve before her eyes. Once she had dropped a sugar cube into water under magnification, and the immediate crumble of molecules before her eyes reminded her of her brother in this moment. 

Since she'd seen him last, Matt had grown his thick hair down his back--whether this was a forced occurrence due to lack of hair cutting skills, time, effort, etc, or a style choice, she honestly couldn't tell. But more than anything, Pidge needed to cut it. She needed her brother to resemble some sort of tamed creature, and running around with giant oodles of dense locks didn't help in the slightest. 

But Matt still looked at blades like coiled up snakes ready to bite. He still screamed in the middle of the night; Pidge pretended not hear him, not to be woken up herself in a cold sweat--not to hear Shiro slip out of his door and enter Matt's, or hear his soft murmurings already inside her brother's bedroom, regrounding him, calming him down. 

In fact, it wasn't just nightmares that had them holding each other for comfort. Pidge wanted to tear her hair out sometimes; Shiro never strayed more than two feet from Matt, and Matt found every excuse to touch the bigger man. Matt examined Shiro's arm about fifty times a day, and they exchanged knowing glances whenever Lance had done something shady, and even when Shiro trained, Matt would either join him or cheer him on. Sometimes Pidge made the mistake of walking in on one of these training sessions and often she discovered that not only was her brother the grossest, but also he called Shiro things like, "gallant knight;" "big boy;" and, "head of Voltron." Which, yeah, it was true, but the way Matt said it made her want to gag. 

Just like this haircut. She blew air out of her nose in frustration. Pidge did her best to support her brother in his trauma, but despite all she'd been through, her brain struggled to comprehend why Matt turned into a useless, terrified puddle at the prospect of a haircut. She set the scissors down on the table, eyes fixed on her brother's face. 

"Okay. Here's the deal." Pidge always had a way of setting the tone, especially if they faced a potentially life-threatening future. She'd weirdly gotten them out of every crazy situation they had been in--even if she got them into most of them, too. "I'm going to cut your hair, okay? It's going to happen. But you're going to tell me when, so you can control when it happens. Okay?"

And then her brother, her mighty big brother who'd been through hell and back, who'd entered space fearlessly with her father, who'd faced off hundreds and thousands and more Galra soldiers than Pidge could count, became something small. Tiny Matt shrunk before her eyes. Defeated and afraid, his wide eyes echoed something she'd only ever felt when she heard the Kerberos mission had gone south. Sadness. Fear. Desperation. A wildness that only came out in a person when they had been beaten and tortured and had the rug torn from beneath them. Pidge swallowed; she had forgotten this feeling, she had buried it deep within her, hidden miles down below in the deepest heart of her pain, under rocks and mortar, and pretended like it didn't exist, as long as there was a chance Matt lived. She'd pretended to let it go, stopped thinking about it, but here, faced with all the pain on Matt's broken features and grief-stricken eyes, Pidge could not escape it. 

She put her hand on his cheek, and Matt clasped his hand over his little sister's. "Katie," he whispered, and his eyes misted over. 

Pidge shook her head, furious that he would cry, that she would have to face watching him cry. Her throat tightened. Words stuck to her mouth like parasites. "Don't call me that," she finally managed. Pidge forced her syllables out like newly emerged butterflies, wet and coiled up and wrinkly. They emerged sticky and confused, and she swallowed, tried to shed the feeling of her mechanical sentence.

Taking a deep breath, Pidge tried again. She flicked her gaze from one of Matt's expressive eyes to the other. "Just tell me when, okay? It'll be okay. It's just a haircut. You've had dozens of them, and they never hurt you."

But Matt stared past her, at the offending silver blades on the counter beside them. "They've hurt me in other ways," he said, face darkening, hardening. His stony resolve sent a chill through Pidge.

She stroked his cheek. "It's okay," she reiterated, and her heart ached to see her brother like this. Ached to see the pain cloud him over, take him somewhere she couldn't reach. Somewhere she didn't want to follow. "Are you ready?"

Matt met her gaze again, and inwardly she shrank away from him. If the eyes were the window to one's soul, Matt's soul was pain. Agony. Torment. Storming somewhere far off, far and unreachable. Pidge forced herself to remain calm, but her fingers shook. Finally, Matt tore his eyes away, stared down the ground like a challenge he didn't really want to win. "No."

Pidge used her hand on his cheek to tilt his head up again. "Look at me, Matt. It's okay. It's _just a haircut_." She gave him a soft smile, willing him to listen, willing to give him strength and encouragement. 

But Matt's eyes grew blurry, and Pidge steeled herself, afraid to watch him cry again. She sighed, and straightened up, letting go of Matt, and crossed her arms. Carefully, she studied her brother, before finally exhaling and rolling her eyes. "Okay. Okay, whatever. I'm going to get Shiro, okay? And he's going to hold your hand and then I can cut your quiznakking hair."

"Pidge! I told you about using that word!" Even teary-eyed and in the thick of his pain, Matt could still be her big brother. But he didn't protest the idea, and Pidge patted him on the shoulder. 

"Okay, yeah, sure. Whatever you say." She stuck her tongue out at him. "I'm going to get Shiro. You sit tight, okay? Will you be alright if I just go get him?" Once she received agreement, she fetched Shiro, whom she found training, panting, and sweaty, and led him back to the bathroom. Matt still sat on the stool before them, eyes wide and body small. Pidge's heart broke a little, but she snuck a glance at Shiro, and her heart shattered. 

Shiro only had eyes for Matt and the pain in Matt's soul could clearly be reflected there. Whatever they'd experienced, unspoken it gave them an understanding that Pidge hoped never to participate in. Unspoken they shared the horrors of a kind of torture and fear unmatched by any others. Even if Matt's skin appeared unmarked, his soul had easily been as scarred as Shiro's. 

He reached for Matt, the two of them impossibly drawn together, almost magnetic, part of an energy field Pidge couldn't see or feel. Matt clung to Shiro, folding into the bigger man's body. Pidge couldn't describe it any other way: the two of them became one, held together by love and trust and wounds that ran deeper than veins. Pidge swallowed; maybe Shiro and Matt were the grossest, but secretly she was grateful her brother had someone who could meet him in this trauma-ridden fog and love him still. 

Pidge watched them for a moment. Shiro touched Matt's face, wrapped himself around the man, murmuring calming phrases. "It's okay, Matt, you're safe. You're safe and we won't hurt you. I'm real and you're real and nothing can harm you." 

Matt seemed like he might cry again, turning his face into Shiro's chest. He breathed in the bigger man's scent, eyes closed, pure exhaustion making his jaw slack. Shiro buried his fingers in Matt's thick hair, his chin on his head, and held him tightly. 

Pidge tried to wait patiently, tried to understand this connection they had, but she just felt her frustration thaw instead, replaced by a newfound appreciation for Shiro. 

After a few moments, Matt lifted his head, not letting go of Shiro but straightening slightly. "Okay," he said softly. "I think I can do it now. But do it so I can't see the scissors, okay?"

Pidge nodded, standing up straight herself. "Of course. You got it, buddy." She grabbed the scissors off the counter and hid them behind her back. Taking a deep breath, she slipped behind her brother and around Shiro, who still had his protective real arm around Matt. "Okay. I'm going to trim it now," she declared, and sectioned off a lock of his hair. The satisfying snip of scissors on hair filled the quiet bathroom. 

Shiro held Matt's hand with his Galra arm, and their fingers intertwined. Matt held very still, but slowly, with encouragement from his sister and his boyfriend, he got his first haircut since Zarkon.


End file.
